Prosser woman remembers the night she killed her best friend

A Prosser woman appeared to wipe away a few tears while watching her own emotional interview with detectives hours after she fatally shot her best friend.

Amy S. Brown, 38, sat at the defense table as prosecutors played the video for jurors in her second-degree murder trial in Benton County Superior Court.

She says she acted in self defense when she shot Amanda Hill twice in the torso.

Hill, 35, was the mother of a young teen boy.

“I fired two shots and when I fired two shots, she was, ‘Amy, what the f---? Are you serious?’ Brown said in her video interview. “And I was, ‘Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.’ And then I noticed that she was bleeding.”

The two women and their boyfriends were celebrating Brown’s 36th birthday in February 2018 by drinking in a camper on Brown’s North River Road property until after midnight.

At some point, Brandon Fayard went inside the house to get some sleep. Hill followed some time later to use the bathroom, according to investigators.

Brown told detectives she went inside and found Hill in bed with Fayard, Brown’s fiancé.

The video was played Wednesday while now-retired Benton County sheriff’s detective Lee Cantu was on the witness stand.

She was animated throughout her interview, and occasionally had to pause while crying.

Brown said she yelled and cursed at Hill, then walked outside the back door of the house to finish her cigarette and her drink.

She told detectives that Hill then rushed outside and attacked her.

“She knocked me on my face and I turned around and she was trying to, like, choke me. But she didn’t have her hands here, she had her hands like here,” Brown said, indicating that Hill’s hands were more on her face than her neck.

“I felt like she was trying to choke me but she had her hands like, whatever,” she continued.

Brown said she reached inside her car and got a gun that she knew was stashed in the door.

“I grabbed it and I pulled it out and I was like, ‘Get off of me,’ and she wouldn’t get off of me and so I fired,” said Brown.

She was asked by detectives if she knew where she aimed at and hit Hill.

“I don’t know where. I just aimed at her torso and I fired two shots,” she said. “That’s all I did, and she was like, ‘Amy, are you f----- serious?’ And I was like, ‘What?’”

Once she realized that her friend had been shot, Brown said she started putting pressure on the wound and screamed at her boyfriend to call 911 for an ambulance.

“And I kept the pressure on until police pulled me off of her,” she said.

Prosecutors wrapped up their case Wednesday after the video interview was played. Brown then testified Thursday in her own defense.

The case is expected to go to the jury Friday. The trial started Feb. 24.

This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 12:51 PM.